Year in Review: Green was York's favorite color in 2008

Wednesday

Dec 31, 2008 at 2:00 AM

York became greener in 2008, adopting two energy-saving measures this year.

Amy Phalon

York became greener in 2008, adopting two energy-saving measures this year.

One of the measures, approved by voters in May, is an ordinance that requires all new municipal buildings in the town to be environmentally responsible and energy efficient. The criteria for the ordinance come from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards. The nonprofit U.S. Green Building Council administers the LEED certification, having set the standards for the "nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high-performance green buildings," according to the council's web site.

York's ordinance requires that new municipal construction conform to the "silver" level of LEED standards.

The effort to pass the ordinance began as part of a project in Richard Clark's advanced political studies class at York High School in 2007. Two York students, Hanna Mitchell and Bridget Rhinehart, said they chose global climate change as a real-life concern to address for a project in the class. The assignment, according to Clark, requires students to identify a concern and develop and implement a plan to address it.

That plan developed into an impressive and workable solution for York. After the passage of the LEED ordinance in May by a vote of 3,140 to 551, Mitchell joined Eric Hopkins, chairman of York's Energy Efficiency Committee, in calling for the town to join the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives association (ICLEI).

At the Dec. 8, 2008 Board of Selectmen's meeting, Hopkins and Mitchell presented the case for membership in ICLEI. According to Hopkins, the information York will be able to gather as a member of ICLEI will help the town meet the goals of the U.S. Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement, which the selectmen voted to endorse last September. The mayor's agreement asks towns to meet targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions set forth in the Kyoto Protocol.

"You need to figure out how much energy and how much greenhouse gas emissions you're generating each year," Hopkins said during the presentation. "ICLIE gives us the software and tools and the consulting that allows us to a carbon inventory."

Selectmen voted unanimously to join ICLIE and to begin evaluating how much energy is consumed by York's municipal buildings. According to Hopkins, membership in ICLIE will provide the town with consulting service and the software to do a carbon inventory. The cost of membership is $600 per year.

Mitchell has volunteered to begin entering data for the carbon inventory, but said she will be leaving York in February to participate in a course offered by Greenpeace that trains students to organize grass-roots environmental campaigns.

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